Asset Ownership and Future Orientation of Youth and Their Parents: Evidence From Ghana

Although future orientation influences a variety of desirable behaviors, few studies have examined the relationship between economic resources and future orientation. In this study, we investigated whether and how asset ownership influences future orientation. We analyzed survey data collected from 3,007 Ghanaian youth and their parents. We used factor analysis to determine the psychometric qualities of our instruments, and propensity score analysis to examine the relationship between asset ownership and future orientation. Results suggest that asset ownership influences future orientation of youth and their parents. However, the direction of the relationship depends on the type of asset. Ownership of household possessions, including televisions contributes to higher levels of future orientation, but livestock ownership has a negative effect on future orientation. We discuss implications for future research, as well as programs for youth and their families.     

From a ‘success’ story to a highly indebted poor country: Ghana and neoliberal reforms

Drawing on the experience of Ghana, which the World Bank itself proclaimed as an African success story in the early 1990s, this paper sheds important light on why neoliberal policies have had limited success in Africa and what strategies are likely to be necessary to foster growth and industrialisation in Ghana and elsewhere in Africa. In 2001, a few short years after being proclaimed as an economic miracle, Ghana joined the growing ranks of highly indebted poor countries (HIPC) – an especially humbling development for this once proud nation. Why did Ghana's economy collapse after recovering so well? Ghana's experience highlights both the promise and limitation of neoliberal reforms.     

Public sector reform in Sub‐Saharan Africa: what can be learnt from the civil service performance improvement programme in Ghana?

This paper focuses on public sector management reform ‘best‐practice’ case experience from Sub‐Sahara African (SSA). Given that ‘best‐practice’ is a relative concept and often debatable, the paper uses the Ghana Civil Service Performance Improvement Programme (GCSPIP) experience as rather a ‘good‐practice’ case with the view to sharing the outcome and lessons to encourage collaborative‐learning. It seeks to share the outcome and lessons learnt by the Ghana civil service reform with future public service reformers and to contribute to the literature. The paper concludes with an adaptable three‐dimensional framework. The framework argues that successful future public service reform (PSR) should consider three broad issues: first, are the ‘critical success factors’, including wholehearted political leadership commitment; wholehearted bureaucratic leadership commitment; thoughtful synergistic planning/preparation; patience for implementation and evaluation; capacity to convince; neutralise and accommodate reform‐phobias and critics; sustainable financial and technical resource availability and conscious nurturing of general public support. Second, is the need for reformers to appreciate the concerns of the public and the civil society scepticism of public ‘institutions’ and its ‘operatives’ and finally placing any reform programme in a country‐specific context, including understanding its history, culture, politics, economy, sociology, ideology and values. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Autonomy,Dependence or Culture: Examining the Impact of Resources and Socio-cultural Processes on Attitudes Towards Intimate Partner Violence in Ghana,Africa

Despite the high levels of domestic violence (intimate partner violence) against African women, tests of competing theories on why the practice is common in the region are quite limited. This study evaluates the effects of resources and cultural factors on attitudes Africans hold about the acceptability of gendered violence, and specifically wife beating (battering). Answers to these questions are relevant to the discourse on intimate partner violence, at least, as pertains to male-dominated societies such as those found in Africa. Drawing on national data from the Ghana Demographic and Health Survey, we explore these linkages in an African context. Our findings suggest that egalitarian decision-making and equal household contributions are associated with a reduced acceptance of abusive actions toward women. We suggest that new questions must be asked concerning the present and future role of men and women within households and the community. We share equally in the conceptualization, data analysis, and writing of the paper. We thank Drs. Nancy B. Miller and Cheryl Elman for their helpful comments on this article.     

Administrative leaders as institutional entrepreneurs in developing countries: A study of the development and institutionalization of performance management in Ghana's public service

Performance management (PM) has become one of the most important reforms in the public sector in both developed and developing countries. Unfortunately, institutionalizing PM in the sector continues to be a major problem. Although a number of scholars continue to study the PM in the public sector from different theoretical perspectives, there has been paucity of research concerning the process of institutionalization. The few studies that have attempted to look at the process have done so from a “coercive isomorphism” perspective, especially through legislation. The lack of studies to examine the process of institutionalization has therefore created a gap, which needs to be filled. We therefore attempt to contribute to this discussion by exploring the role of institutional entrepreneurs and their impact on the development and institutionalization of PM in developing countries, with a particular focus on Ghana, a country obsessed with PM but was only able to institutionalize one in 2013 under the leadership of its Public Services Commission. How was the leadership of the PSC able to succeed where previous leaders could not? What characteristics did they display, and what strategies did they use to get things done? The research is a qualitative one.     

Performing Ghana: the politics of being a black woman on the stage, 1966–1979

This article examines the politics of belonging for women in Ghana’s entertainment scene. As a result of instability while a series of different military and civilian leaders controlled the country between 1966 and 1979, Ghanaian women were scrutinized in local newspapers for actions that were deemed inappropriate, such as provocative dancing. Yet, these same Ghanaian journalists contradicted their own language and respectability ideals by celebrating the sexualized images and performances of Caribbean and African American women visiting Ghana during this period. By distinguishing between the actions of Ghanaian women and women of African descent, their language demonstrates that journalists prioritized national identity politics over the claims of respectability expected of all women in their country. Through the use of what I describe as ‘Ghanaianness’, a term indicating that ‘authenticity politics’ were at stake, I argue that journalists purposefully excluded diasporic women from Ghanaian belonging.     

Land tenure regimes and state structure in rural Africa: implications for forms of resistance to large-scale land acquisitions by outsiders

This paper argues for seeing African land tenure regimes as institutional configurations that have been defined and redefined as part of state-building projects. Land regimes have built state authority in the rural areas, fixed populations in rural territories, and organised rural society into political collectivities subject to central control. Land tenure regimes can be understood as varying across subnational jurisdictions (rather than as invariant across space) in ways that can be grasped in terms of a conceptual distinction between neo-customary and statist forms (rather than as infinitely diverse). Differences between the two have implications for the character of political authority in the rural areas, the nature of political identities and community structure, and the nature of property and land claims. These political effects are visible in differences in the forms of local protest and resistance to commercial land acquisitions in peri-urban Kumasi, Ghana, where a neo-customary land regime prevails, and the Kiru Valley of northern Tanzania, where land institutions are decidedly statist.     

The evolution of the New Patriotic Party in Ghana

This paper examines the emergence and development of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) government in the context of a broader examination of the roles of political parties within the Ghanaian political landscape. After describing the political architecture as well as some significant constitutional issues of Ghana's democracy and the roles played by other societal stakeholders, the paper examines the rationale for the formation of the NPP, its manifesto, structure, constituency, power brokers. It then analyses various aspects of the implementation (or not) of the NPP's political and economic objectives since it came to power in 2000 with a message of ‘positive change’. The electoral politics of the campaigns against its major opposition, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), and issues of regionalism, ethnicity and other factors are considered in detail. The paper concludes with some lessons learned and generic recommendations for emerging African political parties in relatively young democracies.     

Framing the Ghanaian LGBT rights debate: competing decolonisation and human rights frames

This paper investigates how lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights movements in Ghana, both anti and pro, framed the debate that captured media attention in 2006 and 2011. Decolonisation and human rights frames were appropriated, challenged, and dominated by opponents of LGBT rights, making it difficult for LGBT activists to use them. The opponents' corruption frame overpowered the LGBT activists' preservation frame. When LGBT activists used a human rights frame (comparing sexual minorities to racial minorities and to persons with disabilities), the countermovement appropriated it in a way that excluded same-sex relations by comparing sexual minorities to “deviants”, persons with mental illnesses, and animals. The interaction between the decolonisation and human rights frames was also problematic: the corruption frame not only rendered the LGBT activists' preservation frame nearly useless, but it also made their use of the human rights frame appear to be cultural imperialism and problematised the help they received from international LGBT organisations.     

Public Administrators Under Democratic Governance in Ghana

The politicization of the public service has been the subject of scholarly interest and debate. This article based on a desk study makes a contribution to this debate by examining the constitutional, legal, and political framework and environment within which public administrators operate in Ghana since the return to constitutional rule in 1993. It discusses the participation of public administrators in partisan politics and the challenges faced as well as benchmarking the Ghanaian experience against some countries. The article found that there has been growing politicization of the public service and an increase in the number of public administrators in partisan politics. The Ghanaian case reinforces the highly intense political environment within which public administrators operate and the myth of the politics-administration dichotomy.